One Purim the daughter of a friend dressed up in the most amazing costume. The whole family dressed as famous paintings and carried frames. I mistakenly thought that they were dressed as book covers because one daughter dressed as Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring and her mother and I had just read Tracy Chevalier’s novel about it. The painting is featured on the cover. My friend was dressed as Son of Man by René Magritte. My husband had just bought a book with a similar image on the cover. The other daughter was the Mona Lisa. As you can see by the photo below they had a lot of Purim fun with their theme.
I so loved this photo that I decided to try to paint it myself. The photos below show the progression. I really liked how the scarf started out but in the end I layered it over and over trying to get it right that I think I messed it up. My son pointed out that at first she was too flat-chested (I guess he noticed) so I worked on that. I changed he booklet from a book to a Megillah scroll and added a dark background. At first I thought that Vermeer’s background was black but looking closer I saw that it was blotchy dark olive, so I used dark olive for my background as well. I was using acrylics so the brush effect couldn’t be replicated but it still has a blotchy effect. Looking at it now I see that I was timid about shadows on the face and that I need to work on that. My son, my best critic, thinks that I failed to capture our friend, however he said it’s a nice painting of a girl in a scarf. Her mother tells me that it is hanging on the wall in her daughter’s room. That made me feel happy.
